"I think I feel the same thing as all other crewmembers: It's a
huge responsibility; we are excited," Serova said through a
translator during a prelaunch press briefing from Baikonur.
[ Women
in Space: A Gallery of Firsts ]

"We would like to say a special thank you to all people who
supported us, who trained us, who built our rocket," she added.
"We will do our best."

The Soyuz is scheduled to reach the International Space Station
about six hours after liftoff. You can
watch a live webcast of the capsule's arrival on Space.com,
courtesy of NASA TV. The docking webcast will begin at 9:45 p.m.
EDT (0145 GMT). Another webcast at 11:30 p.m. EDT (0330 GMT) will
show the Soyuz crewmembers entering their new orbital home.

Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova will join the space station's
Expedition 41, which currently consists of NASA astronaut Reid
Wiseman, Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency and Russian
cosmonaut Maxim Suraev. This latter trio will return to Earth in
November, while Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova will remain in
orbit until March 2015.

Wiseman radioed NASA's Mission Control at the Johnson Space
Center in Houston shortly after the Soyuz launch to say he and
his crewmates were able to watch a video feed live.

"That looked like a good ride," Wiseman said. "We look forward to
seeing them in orbit, and we'll have dinner ready waiting for
them."

Serova, 38, is the first Russian woman to leave Earth since Elena
Kodakova visited Russia's Mir space station on a space shuttle
mission in 1997. The other two female cosmonauts were Svetlana
Savitskaya, who flew on space missions in 1982 and 1984, and
Valentina
Tereshkova, who in 1963 became the first woman to reach
space.

An American woman didn't get to orbit until Sally Ride flew on
the STS-7 space shuttle mission in 1983. But a number of female
NASA astronauts have lived and worked aboard the International
Space Station. Peggy Whitson, for example, became the first woman
to command a space station mission when she took the reins of
Expedition 16 in 2007.

While Serova is a spaceflight rookie, today's launch marks the
second space mission for both Wilmore and Samokutyaev.

Russia's Soyuz spacecraft and rockets are currently NASA's only
way to launch American astronauts into space since the retirement
of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011. Last week, NASA
announced that it will fly astronauts to the International Space
Station on new private space taxis built by the commercial
spaceflight companies SpaceX and Boeing beginning in 2017.

Construction of the $100 billion orbiting outpost began in 1998,
and it has been staffed continuously by rotating crews on roughly
six-month stints since November 2000.